


Me and Janey Down by the Schoolyard

by queerwatson



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/F, Gen, Genderswap, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-14
Updated: 2012-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-31 03:37:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/339469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerwatson/pseuds/queerwatson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane has to babysit Harry and takes him to see Sherlock with her - she also reminisces on how the two of them met.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Me and Janey Down by the Schoolyard

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is kid!fem!lock. I have no regrets. It started out as an exercise for my creative writing class, and then boom, fic. I don't know. Title credit to Paul Simon's Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard.

The echoing of another smaller pair of footsteps crunching through the leaves behind her had been the last thing Jane had wanted to hear that day. Harry followed her around incessantly when she had to watch him, and she knew that he would ruin everything if she tried to hang out with Sherlock - regardless, she was hoping that if she pretended Harry wasn’t there, maybe he’d just stay quiet.

“Janey, I’m bored.”

She stopped; turned. “Look, Harry, I already had plans to-” But Harry wasn’t even looking at her anymore. His eyes were closed, and he had lain down in the leaves. “Harry, I’m going to hang out with Sherlock. You will not make embarrassing remarks about things I have said about her, or anything I have done at home. You will see if Marilyn can deal with you even though she has important work to do, and you will at least attempt to behave. Okay?”

Harry didn’t respond so much as he rolled around sulkily in the leaves for a moment, letting the crunching sounds do his grumbling for him. Soon, though, he stood, and Jane made sure to dust leaf bits off his jumper before she took his smaller hand in hers and continued the march to the Holmes abode.

Once there, Sherlock greeted them at the door. “I’m in the middle of something very important, I can’t wait to -” She cut herself off as she noticed Harry. “Did you have to bring him?”

Jane sighed, shuffling her feet. “Yeah, mum said I had to. Sorry. Do you think we can just shove him in a room with Marilyn and get him out of the way? She usually doesn’t mind him.”

Sherlock wrinkled her nose. “Marilyn isn’t here. I don’t really want to deal with him -”

“‘M still here,” Harry mumbled.

“But I do want to show you what I’ve been working on, and then you can finally show me that doctor show you’re always on about -”

“It’s not a doctor show - it’s called Doctor Who, but he’s not really a medical doctor.”

“Right, yes, fine. Well, keep a hold on that... thing and make sure he doesn’t mess with my fingerprint lab.”

Nodding, Jane shot a pointed look back at Harry and he nodded too, after a long moment. She took his hand and followed Sherlock back to her room - which was filled to the brim with experiments most sixteen year old girls wouldn’t think of. That was one of the things that had drawn her to Sherlock. Jane had spent most of her younger years playing with the boys, and when that wasn’t acceptable anymore, most of the girls thought she was odd for wanting to be a soldier when she grew up. She could talk about boys with the best of them - she wasn’t gay, no matter what Harry said about how she acted about Sherlock - but sometimes it got so... Boring, as Sherlock was so fond of saying, that the other girls wouldn’t talk about anything but boys and makeup. Her best friends had still been boys - the few that weren’t afraid to be seen with a girl - until the day Sherlock showed up. She’d been home schooled for some time until she entered high school and Mike Stamford had told Jane that Sherlock was:

_“Just about as weird as you are - no offense.” He’d smiled, then, and punched her in the arm, she’d punched right back - but kept her eyes on Sherlock the whole time._

_“Sherlock - that’s kind of a weird name for a girl, isn’t it?”_

_Mike shrugged. “Yeah, I thought so, too. But I’ve never heard of a boy named Sherlock, either.”_

_Jane watched as Sherlock read - she couldn’t make out the title from the other side of the schoolyard and she decided to approach the other girl. “I’m gonna go introduce myself.”_

_“Good luck with that,” Mike joked. He narrowed his gaze a little, then as he looked across at Sherlock. “She looks like she could use a friend, though.”_

_Smiling back at Mike, Jane turned and walked directly up to Sherlock. She opened her mouth to speak, but the strange girl before her spoke instead. “We won’t get along.”_

_There’d been a moment of shock even before the slight disappointment set in. Then, she frowned. “How do you know? I mean, you don’t know anything about -”_

_Sherlock looked up from her book then, smirking a little. “I know all of your friends are male - almost exclusively. I know that you read a lot of comic books - not very good for your mind, by the way. I know that you have a little sister and you don’t get along very well.”_

_“I... That’s really impressive. How could you possibly know all that? Did Mike talk to you about me or something?”_

_“I deduced it.”_

_“Sorry, what?”_

_At this, Sherlock actually smiled. “I deduced it. You smell like boys’ cologne - it’s faint enough though, that you don’t wear it - you’ve been spending a lot of time around boys, then. I know you read a lot of comic books by the ink stains on your fingers from where you’ve been turning the pages - there’s also ink under your nails - someone’s been grabbing your comics away from you, and you’ve grabbed tightly onto them, scraping up some of the ink in the process - but who? Not a parent or you’d probably let them have them - most likely a sibling. Commonly I’d say brother, but there are scratches and bruises on your hands and wrists - brothers don’t usually leave scratches. Why are they on your wrists and hands? Because they’re smaller than you - they can’t reach your face or neck. So, younger brother and you don’t get along because who wouldn’t be angry at someone stealing their things?”_

_The first thing that Jane noticed, then, in all that was that Sherlock had a very nice voice. The second thing was that Sherlock was really, really smart and didn’t seem to be very interested in boys or makeup, which was extremely promising. “That’s really quite cool. Why... why does any of that mean we won’t get along, though?”_

_Sherlock closed her book, then, shrugging a little. “Most people are usually gone by the time I start telling them things about themselves that no one else told me.”_

_“Well, you didn’t get everything right, so I could tell you were guessing, but the way you-”_

_“I don’t guess!” Sherlock paused, then for a moment, frowning. “And what did I get wrong? I’m never wrong.”_

_Jane laughed. “I have a little brother - his name is Harry. The bruises are from him, but the scratches are from when I helped Mike get his cat out of a tree yesterday.”_

_“I didn’t know that happened in real life,” Sherlock remarked, tilting her head at Jane._

_“What? Little brothers?”_

_With a dismissive wave of her hand, Sherlock rolled her eyes. “No, I have an older sister, siblings obviously happen. I meant helping get cats out of trees. My mummy says that everything on television is rubbish, and I’ve only seen that happen on television - the once or twice my nanny forced me to watch it.”_

_Almost finding herself in awe, Jane shook her head a little. “I just did it yesterday. Mike and Harry can tell you, too. Mike’s cat usually just goes in and out of the tree when it pleases, but there was rain coming, the cat either got scared or stubborn, so I had to get it out.” She looked down then, at Sherlock’s book. “All Quiet on the Western Front?” Sherlock only raised an eyebrow. “I just... I like that book, too. I want to be a soldier one day.”_

_Sherlock made a curious sound, then, and somehow Jane knew that Sherlock would also be wrong about them not getting along._

She was shaken from her fonder thoughts as Harry pulled at her jumper. “Janey, I’m bored again.” They had only just reached Sherlock’s lab.

“Harry, please just be quiet.”

Jane knew what happened when Harry got bored - he teased her. Teasing her around Sherlock would probably consist of Harry accidentally telling Sherlock the truth, and that just wasn’t something she could deal with right now.

“Right, Jane, so in addition to the fact that I finally completed my fingerprint collection for the entire 11th year class, I managed to obtain several real human fingernails -”

“Sherlock, that’s sort of disgusting.”

She sighed, then. “Jane, the interactions they have are so interesting, though!”

“I get that. But I don’t want to see them. And Harry might-”

“Cool!”

“Harry!” She pulled him back from Sherlock’s lab tables just in time and squeezed her eyes shut. “Harry might get morbidly fascinated with them.”

“Right. Well -”

“I do have to ask, though, how did you finally get Sebastian’s fingerprint?”

Sherlock smiled at her a little, then, obviously proud. “He bought new pens the other day - they have quite the grip, big enough that the partial is good enough to work with. I asked to borrow one of these pens and made sure I had my gloves on. Then I put the pen in a bag, took it home, and printed it properly.”

“Brilliant, as usual.”

Sherlock’s smile grew until Harry started singing “Janey and Sherlock, sitting in a tree -!” She got a hand over his mouth before any more escaped and her own smile grew sheepish.

“What was that?” Sherlock asked, genuinely curious.

“Just - it’s a stupid kid’s rhyme. Nothing important.”

“I’ve never heard it before. What’s it about?”

As always, Sherlock had to know bloody _everything_. Jane contemplated lying for a moment, but then knew better. “The full rhyme is about two people kissing in a tree and then proceeding to get married and have a life together.”

“Why would he sing that with our names in it?”

Jane glared at her snickering little brother, then, keeping a hand over his mouth. “I have no idea,” she choked out through her gritted teeth.

For once, Sherlock let it go, and they went back out into the living room and Jane pulled her Doctor Who DVDs out of her bag. “Right. So. We’ll start with Genesis of the Daleks. Then if you like it I have a plan for what we need to watch next.”

She placed Harry on the floor in front of the television - he liked the couple of episodes of Doctor Who he’d seen, so Jane had hopes he could remain human for a couple more, and she sat with Sherlock on the couch, a respectable distance between them. She always let Sherlock close any distance between them because she was quite fond of physical contact, and she knew that Sherlock wasn’t.

It took only half of the first episode for Harry to get fidgety, and by the time it was over, he was in full annoying mode again. Sherlock’s face had been kept near expressionless the entire time, but before Jane could ask her opinion, Harry had spoken.

“Janey, could the Doctor ever be a woman?”

Jane frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe. Why are you asking, Harry?”

He leaned back and contorted rather oddly so he could see Jane. “Because I think Sherlock is like the Doctor and you should be her Sarah Jane. Your name’s even kind of the same.”

Obviously, this left Jane blushing. She looked down at Harry and narrowed her gaze, but before she could give him a warning, this time Sherlock spoke. “That sounds like an excellent plan to me, though perhaps I should watch a little more before I try to be the Doctor.”

If it was possible for her face to get any more red, it almost certainly did so. “I... um. I’m certainly not opposed to this plan.” Could she be any less opposed? She would have dreams for weeks and weeks about traveling in the TARDIS with Sherlock, fighting the Daleks and spending spare time in the Victorian age.

She finally got the courage to look over at Sherlock, and found that she was smiling, too. There went any hope she’d had about getting the idiotic grin off of her face. “Right, well, maybe we should get on with the next episode, then, I have to get -” She looked down at her watch. “Oh, bloody - sorry, Sherlock, I’ve got to get Harry home.”

Sherlock stood, then, to walk the two of them to the door, and help Jane gather all of her things. “I hope next time you can stay longer - and I would rather your... brother not accompany you. It was alright seeing you again, though, Harry. Thank you for your complementary comparison drawn between me and the Doctor.”

“It wasn’t-” Jane got her hand over Harry’s mouth again.

“Sorry. Yes, hopefully he won’t have to come next time. I’ll see you, though, at school, right?”

“Of course.” Sherlock tilting her head, then, and Jane was frozen to the spot as Sherlock’s examination drew their faces together before finally, Sherlock kissed her on the cheek and pulled away again to scrutinize her face. “Interesting. Goodbye, Jane.”

Jane knew she was bright red. “Right. Erm... Bye, Sherlock!” She grabbed Harry’s hand and took the other off his mouth as she hurried away, glancing back to see Sherlock still standing on her doorstep, with a pleased looking smile on her face.

Even though the way the afternoon had ended had certainly been unexpected, Jane was very, very happy as she took Harry home, and even stopped to get him some ice cream before they got all the way there. She was a little late, but her parents weren’t mad, and she went up to her room still feeling the phantom of Sherlock’s lips on her cheek, knowing her blush hadn’t left.


End file.
